Despite a Mahayuti wave sweeping across Maharashtra, late Baba Siddique's son Zeeshan Siddique lost the Vandre East seat to Shiv Sena UBT's Varun Sardesai. The son of Baba Siddique, whose murder ahead of the polls had rocked Maharashtra, lost to the Maha Vikas Aghadi nominee by a margin of 11,365 votes. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's T Bala Sawant came third with 16,074 votes.
When the counting of votes came to a close in the Vandre East (also called Bandra East) constituency, Varun Sardesai received 57,708 votes while Zeeshan Siddique's received 46,343 votes. For the unversed Sardesai is Aaditya Thackeray's cousin.
MAHARASHTRA'S VANDRE EAST: CHECK THE RESULT HERE
"I humbly accept the mandate of the people of my Vandre East assembly constituency. I wish Varun all the best. I promise to continue working hard towards the development and betterment of Vandre East, Mumbai, and Maharashtra. I thank each one of you who trusted me and voted for me and stood by me during these tough times," he said on X.
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The incumbent Zeeshan Siddique had won the seat in 2019 on a Congress ticket. However, he was expelled from the grand old party in August this year. Baba Siddique, who held close ties with Bollywood bigshots like Salman Khan too had abandoned the Congres to join the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). He had accused the Congress of not being secular and claimed that the party did not give seats to Muslim candidates.
Zeeshan joined hands with the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP a month ahead of the polls "For the first time, I saw there was no Muslim in the upper house, and now the NCP nominated a Muslim. Ajitdada is a leader who takes along people from every group and religion and is actually secular. There is a party which was not secular but has called itself secular overnight, like the Shiv Sena (UBT). This is not secularism," he had said.
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A total of 1,912 opted for NOTA in Vandre East, the Election Commission of India (ECI) website showed.
It was outside Zeeshan Siddique's office that armed gangsters had fatally shot his father in October.
